A Song of Knives and Crowns

IV: Aptitude

The first thing Rev noticed when they entered the Aptitude testing room was that the instructor was a Dauntless, and not an Abnegation. All students had to be tested by instructors of another faction - usually, Abnegations would test the other four factions, but Abnegations could be tested by either Candor, Erudite, Amenity, or Dauntless. Oddly enough, the Dauntless instructor seemed about the same age as Rev (sixteen) or maybe even younger (twelve) to keep the age gap relative. Nevertheless, she was a Dauntless, as was evident by her dark clothing (because only people from the Dauntless faction were permitted to wear dark clothing). For any other faction to wear dark clothing was punishable by death - or, in Abnegation's case, just against the rules, as overly pigmented fabric was a waste of good pigment and a capitalist way of maintaining an iron hold over the clothing choices of the working class who could not afford highly pigmented clothes.

"Heya Rev," the Dauntless said, "I'm Mistia, and I'll be your instructor today to help guide you through the Aptitude process and control your simulation. In this simulation, you'll be presented with a series of realistic situations that will force you to react in a way that reveals one of your five personalities - and by that I mean, it will tell us which one of the five possible personalities you have as a human being. The other four personalities will be forbidden to you. You are not allowed to have more than one personality trait."

Rev nodded. "Yes, yes, I know this."

"Right, well, I don't. I've never even watched or read Divergent, so how I am supposed to know this? Sorry for the exposition. Jeez."

Rev indicated towards the chair in the centre of the room. It was bright blue, like a dentist's chair. Sitting atop it was a strange headpiece, which appeared to be two diadems connected together by a long tube. A tank on the side of the chair pumped liquid through this long tube, spreading a medium in between the diadem for something to pass through. "...Alright, fine, I guess. What's that then?"

Mistia perked up, apparently pleased to have something else to explain. "Oh yes, that's the chair, rawr xd!" She pronounced the last word like "ex-dee". "Sit on there and I'll inject with the Aptitude Serum, which will put you in a state of dreamlike obedience, and I'll connect us both with the headpiece which will allow me to mentally control the situation you are experiencing in real time - to an extent. The government approves of this, by the way, so please do not seek legal action: it will be a waste of both of our time. But, in terms of the simulation, I will provide you with the circumstances. How you react is entirely within your own control."

Bored already, Rev rolled their eyeballs, superior oblique, inferior oblique, medial, lateral, superior and inferior recti muscles all working together to achieve the most beautiful yoked conjugate movement the world had ever known. "Not gonna lie, it's been a while since I was allowed to sit in a chair. My parents always called them the steel boots of the wealthy. The only time I'm allowed to touch a chair is when I'm cleaning one in my maid outfit."

The Dauntless was absently prepping a needle with experience that only a twelve year old could have. A twelve year old who had obviously been doing this for quite some time. "Oh yeah? You wear a maid outfit when you clean the rich bitch houses? Do you look good?"

Remembering the mess that the Revs had made of Rev-15, Rev thought it best to give a noncommittal grunt and move on. "What kind of healthcare experience is this? Just cut the exposition and get me in the chair. I already know what my results are going to show - Abnegation. It's what everybody expects of me, after all, and I would never do what people don't expect of me. I'm quirky and different, but not that quirky and different."

"That's a lot of double negatives, but yes," Mistia agreed seriously, "you can only be what your family is, and you will never escape this hellhole. Will any of us ever escape this hellhole? Is there an end to this doomed obedience, or are we fated to run on this treadmill of life until we faint from exhaustion and fall off?" The needle filled up with a strange blue liquid. "Even if we do fall off, what will happen to us then? What will happen to our bodies, to our minds?"

Rev climbed into the chair. "Ayup."

"Just something to think about, I guess," Mistia said absently, jabbing Rev in the neck with the needle, and sitting in the adjacent desk chair. As Rev's superior tarsal plates dripped down (caused by parasympathetic neurons in the oculomotor nerve innervating the superior levator palpebrae), Mistia arranged a strange headpiece on Rev's forehead and stuck the other end to her own.

"Alright," she said, "hang tight and just be..."

Rev was already asleep before the Dauntless could finish her sentence.

When they came to, the room they came to in was long and plated with mirrors on all sides, creating the illusion that the room was even longer than it was, which was to say, incredibly long. The floor and ceilings were made of brown glass, which mosaiced out in the mirrors like a kaleidoscope. In the centre (or what could be perceived as the "centre") of the room were two pedestals. One held a knife, the other (nonsensically enough) a block of cheese.

Rev walked over, ate the cheese (cheese was a luxury, and she was determined to indulge in this dairy-y goodness. Cows were a capitalist invention, as was nutrition), grabbed the knife in one hand, and picked up one of the pedestals in the other. They reasoned that it was okay to eat the cheese: it was only a simulation. Once they left the simulation, there would be no nutritional benefit to her body, thus, it was only figurative submission to the middle classes. So this was only a partial betrayal of the Abnegation values.

The pedestal was a great big stone thing, heavy and grey.

Spinning around, they smashed it against one of the mirrors before them, raising an arm in front of their face as the glass shattered into various sharp shards and splintered across the floor. While the nutritional benefit of cheese was fleeting and immaterial, mirrors would show their reflection for once and for all, permanently. Whether or not one were in a simulation, looking at oneself in the mirror was an act of self-indulgence, unless one was wearing a maid uniform and on one's way to clean a rich people's house (then it was a tired reflection of one's role in society). But unfortunately Rev was wearing their Abnegation garb (a shapeless hassan sack) in a simulation, and to look in the mirror while wearing daily garb was a cardinal sin.

"MIRRORS ARE A TOOL OF THE BOURGEOISIE," she screamed.

They looked down - thankfully, they were wearing proper shoes in the simulation. If they'd been wearing the stupid threadbare cotton slips, surely their feet would be shredded before they walked clear of the mess.

They lapped the room, smashing each mirrored wall until the bare walls were the only thing that looked back. From there, they hefted the yet-unbroken stone pedestal above their head and brought it down sharply on the brown floor tiles, causing the stone to splinter into several sharp shards on the floor. Squatting over the demolition, they removed their jacket and wrapped it around their hands, using this protection to safely rummage around in the stone mess until procuring a baseball-bat shaped shard, heavy and long and sharp on one end.

They took the remains of the cheese wheel and mounted this on the head of the bat, pushing it down until about 10cm (3.937 inches) of the pointy stone head poked up above the rind of the dairy round. After this, they returned to a comfortable slav squat on the floor, picking up the large glass shards from the mirrors with the jacket-glove, wedging them into the cheese wheel to stud the dairy with broken pieces. The end result was a weapon that somewhat resembled the Seattle Space Needle, if the rotating restaurant was a glass studded cheese wheel and the spike at the top was a pointy fragment of stone, and if it was a lean mean killing machine.

"I don't think you're Abnegation," Mistia's disembodied voice said. "I think you're clinically insane."

Suddenly a dog appeared.

"RAWR," it barked. "WOOF WOOF BARK BARK GRRRRRRRR."

Rev calmly requested that the dog calm itself. When the dog didn't Rev brained it with the cheese glass bat.

"Moving on," said Mistia, uneasily.

A.N: I got bored and didn't know how to finish this (sorry for an abrupt ending), and then I decided to write 3000 words of Rev cleaning in a maid fit, so get ready for that in two chapters. I hope Rev appreciates the mental sacrifice I have made for this.  - Saens